Toby Perkins
Main Page: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)Tuesday 28th March 2017
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 View all Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Amendments as at 28 March 2017 - (28 Mar 2017)
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way and to the Government for listening to the powerful case that was made by CAMRA and many other organisations. The new mixed A3/A4 class is an elegant solution to the issue raised in respect of the amendment in the other place. Will the Minister nevertheless clarify on the record that, in keeping with his proposals, the same removal of permitted development rights that is now going to operate in the A3 and A4 classes will also operate in the mixed use A3/A4 class, which has not been specifically clarified?
Gavin Barwell
If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I think he will get exactly the clarification that he is looking for—but the simple answer is yes. I shall come on to it again later in my speech. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. The Government’s intent is very much to honour the principle behind the Lords amendment, but we believe we have a better solution that will provide pubs with more flexibility and do a better job of ensuring their viability in the long term.
Gavin Barwell
I think my hon. Friend shares my concern that we need to ensure that St Albans gets an up-to-date local plan in place as quickly as possible to provide the housing that is so desperately needed in that part of the world. My hon. Friend has spoken to me about it several times, and I know that other Members who represent the local authority area share her concern. We need to avoid perverse incentives, and my reassurance to my hon. Friend is that the Government will be doing plenty of other things to make sure that local authorities deliver the housing that is required in their areas. Where people have legitimate concerns about the impact of permitted development rights on the level of office space in their area—my hon. Friend is clearly one of them—provided that the council is delivering the required housing, we want to allow some flexibility. I know that she will work closely with me to try to make sure that St Albans makes progress on that issue.
To conclude, and returning to planning for pubs, I hope that hon. Members will accept the assurances I have given today—indeed, that seems to be the case—and agree that we have reflected the will of Parliament. I have met the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) who is in his place, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie), who is not in her place but who has lobbied me extensively on this issue. Indeed, Members of both Houses have spoken with great passion about the need to allow for local consideration of the change of use or demolition of all pubs. Our amendments in lieu set out how we will ensure the successful delivery of these changes, and I can commit today to laying the secondary regulation by July—essentially as soon as we can after the Bill hopefully receives Royal Assent. On that basis, I hope that all hon. Members will support this amendment.
Toby Perkins
I am pleased to speak in support of Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu of Lords amendment 22. I think they will make a material difference to the fortunes of many of Britain’s 48,000 pubs; give certainty to investors in the pub trade; and, crucially, put communities back in control of decisions that have a real bearing on their community. I speak as chairman of the renamed all-party parliamentary pub group, and as a real pub enthusiast.
I would like to record my appreciation of many people and groups in securing this important victory, including Lord Kennedy who tabled the amendment in the House of Lords and was very successful in ensuring such overwhelming cross-party support that the Government were persuaded to adopt the amendment in lieu. I also thank the pub-supporting campaign groups such as CAMRA and the British Pub Confederation, and my fellow members of the all-party parliamentary group on pubs, who held a really informative round table last week on the many different approaches across the country to using the planning system to save pubs.
I would also like to acknowledge, as did the Minister, the important work done by my predecessor as chair of the APPG, the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland), who proposed the motion in Committee that was subsequently supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon).
I also think it right to acknowledge that the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) originated the process with an amendment to a different Bill. Although the case she made was unsuccessful, it has proved important in bringing about this change.
As I said a moment ago, I am grateful to the Government for broadly adopting a motion to which there had been some hostility. It takes courage to change one’s mind. The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), came to the CAMRA reception and assured us that the Government were listening, and the Government’s actions on this occasion suggest that he was as good as his word. All due credit should be paid to him.
There is nothing quite like the first visit to any British pub. I know that I am not alone in feeling that little frisson of excitement when I step through the door of a pub for the first time—pushing open that creaking door, and wondering what will be waiting for me behind it. It is, one might say, an adult and real-life version of an Advent calendar: behind every door is a different surprise.
As one of those doors creaks open, we wonder how the pub will be laid out. Will we be able to get a table? Who will be in there, and how many people will be in there? What will be on the walls, and what will the bar look like? Each pub is different. Will the bar steward’s face be a picture of welcoming joy—or maybe not? Will there be a log fire in the winter? Will there be a garden in the summer? Will there be a dartboard, a pool table, a pub dog or cat? Will a loudmouth be propping up the bar, commenting on topics on which he has assumed a level of expertise from a programme that he once saw on television? Will someone be commenting on the performance of his Member of Parliament and asking, inevitably, whether that Member of Parliament will be claiming his pint back on expenses? That one never really grows old.
Finally, of course, there is the question of what the pub will be serving. There is so much more to visiting a pub than having a drink, and that is the magic of it. I know my own favourite beers, and I can pop into Morrisons just down the road and buy as much as I like, far more cheaply than I can in many pubs. However, the drinks are just a fraction of the experience; the magic comes from the entire ensemble. Just as there is a magic to visiting any pub for the first time, there is a joy in having a local where you really feel at home, and where the characters, the beers, the landlord or landlady and the décor seem almost as familiar as if you were indeed in your own home.
We live in different times, and—let us be candid—in difficult times for the pub trade. The days when a single publican, running a single pub for decades at a time, was a staple of every high street are long gone. The long-standing publican is now becoming a rarity, and our communities are the poorer for it. However, many of those communities still have long-standing connections and relationships with their local pubs. Whether they are regular attenders or occasional visitors, the pub is a part of their community—one that we all too often take for granted, and a feature that is only really missed when it is under threat or gone.
Let me assure the House that none of us is suggesting that unpopular or poorly run pubs have a right to exist. Communities that do not back their local pub cannot assume that it will always be there. When I bought my house back in 1998 the Terminus was my local, but after a string of landlords within just a few years, it is gone. The only reminders of it are a plaque on the wall that reminds us where it once stood and the local bowling green, which is still called the Terminus Bowling Club although the pub from which it took its name is long gone.
In a small town like Chesterfield, I have to walk a mile to reach what you would call my local, and that, I think, is a comment on the times in which we live. If we do not get out and support our pubs, it is no good complaining when they are gone. Similarly, the industry knows that it is living in an ever more competitive world. The competition for the leisure pound has never been fiercer. From satellite television and a bottle at home to an array of takeaways and restaurants to suit every palate, the alternatives to a pint in the local are multitudinous.
Pubs will continue to close on occasion, but I think that it really sticks in the craw of communities when popular and well-used pubs—or even pubs that play a central role in a community—which may well be under poor management at a particular time are lost for good without the community having any say. The tenant in a pub is not just a business owner but the guardian of something precious in that community, and the duty of the pub-owning business to ensure that the guardians it appoints have the wherewithal to protect the precious assets that they are responsible for running is very important.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words earlier. The main purpose of the amendment that we are all supporting today is to tackle the scourge of predatory purchasing, especially by supermarkets. The Co-op is the worst in that regard. Does the hon. Gentleman think that it is time for CAMRA to look again at its agreement with the Co-op, and to say, “This must stop, because it has not worked”—as, hopefully, the amendment will?
Toby Perkins
I certainly support the amendment, and I agree that it is necessary because previous measures were not working. I met representatives of the Co-op recently, and their approach was pretty constructive. They said that they would be making a planning application in every case.
Greg Mulholland
It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman met those Co-op representatives recently. As he knows, last year the Save the Pub group was misled by the Co-op, which gave a clear assurance that it would not take pubcos’ view of viability as fact, but, as has been made clear by local CAMRA branches and the British Pub Confederation, it has continued to do so. The Co-op speaks with forked tongue, as the Save the Pub group has proved before, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will stick with holding it to account.
Toby Perkins
We certainly will stick with holding it to account. If the hon. Gentleman has evidence that, since those reassurances were given, the Co-op is going down that road without seeking planning permission, I will definitely support him in what he has said.
In Chesterfield, we organised a huge public campaign which, although it does not relate specifically to the Co-op, is relevant to the issue that the hon. Gentleman has raised. We campaigned to save the Crispin Inn in Ashgate Road when EI Group, previously known as Enterprise Inns, wanted to sell it to Tesco. The campaign was won and Tesco pulled out, only for a new developer to come along and demolish the pub, and then start consulting on what should happen on the land where it had stood. Eventually, housing was built there.
In my previous role as shadow pubs Minister, I met so many groups all over the country who were fighting so hard to save the pubs that they loved and on which communities depended. It was wrong that a developer could turn a pub into a supermarket without planning permission, but could not do it the other way round. It was wrong that a building that was potentially a precious community asset could be knocked down before the community was even able to have a say. The coalition Government did take steps to reinforce the right of communities to have a say, but, although well intentioned, their efforts were a bit like trying to catch a flood in a cup.
The great attribute of the amendment proposed by Lord Kennedy and subsequently adopted, with further amendments, by the Government is that it gives certainty to everyone involved in the industry. We must never forget that Britain’s pubs are a business, an industry with investors who need certainty. The danger of going too far down the localism route was that when a business was considering an investment decision, it was faced with potentially dozens of different legislative approaches and hurdles across its portfolio. That approach also left councils at the mercy of aggressive legislation, and they were expected to incur the legal expense of defending the measures that they had introduced to protect their pubs.
The “asset of community value” approach has given some communities a precious opportunity to fight for the pub that they love, but it did mean that often the only way to save a pub was to agree to become its owner. There is some value in that sort of community activism, but it should not be necessary to be willing to buy a pub in order to have a view on it.
Last week, the APPG heard from the community team that had successfully bought the Antwerp Arms in Tottenham, having used the ACV legislation to save their pub. We also heard from Wandsworth Council, which had placed a requirement for article 4 directions on about 220 of its locals. It deserves credit for its efforts, but the danger of using article 4 directions is that the landscape is different in each local authority. That led to some publicans having to obtain planning permission just to paint or decorate their pubs, which is a positive disincentive to improving or investing in the pub estate. The approach that is being advocated today will bring the certainty and clarity that everyone connected with the industry needs, and it will not prevent the owners of buildings from adopting the needs of their buildings to maximise new opportunities.
Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
While we commend local authorities for taking the trouble to exercise the procedure that my hon. Friend has outlined, it was difficult for a number of authorities in other parts of the country that did not have the necessary capacity or the ability to meet the potential costs that would have enabled them to build up the case for doing so. This measure will be enormously helpful in ensuring that local authorities need not embark on that potentially expensive route.
Toby Perkins
I could not agree more; it meant that different authorities with different priorities brought forward measures at different times, and some of them never regarded this as a priority, even though they might have had sympathy with the intentions of the legislation. What this measure does is ensure that, rather than local authorities having in effect to use legislation for an entirely different purpose than intended and place blanket conditions on all their pubs, there is a simple and clear method whereby developers will know that, quite simply, if they want to make a change to the use of a pub, they will have to get planning permission.
We know that pubs will open and pubs will close, and this Bill will ensure that all the evidence is considered before such decisions are made. As I have said, it is sensible of the Government to create the new A3/A4 mixed use class, and I am glad they have made it clear that it is their intention that the mixed use class should enjoy the same protections as the A3 and A4 classes.
I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to the question of what might happen until the Bill is passed. He has set out the Government’s wish to have secondary legislation in place by July, which is a sensible timescale. However, there is a worry that this is going to lead to a rush of businesses or developers buying pubs and levelling them before the regulations are in place, so everyone must take all the steps they can to prevent a rush of conversions or demolitions. I shall be interested to hear the Minister suggest steps that the Government or local authorities and communities may take to prevent that from coming to pass.
I am very pleased to have been able to take a few moments to reflect on the value of the 48,000 British pubs to our communities. When visitors come to the United Kingdom, one of the first things they want to do is have their first pint in a British pub. The British pub is a tremendously important asset to our country, and I will be very pleased to welcome the Government’s adoption of this amendment. I am pleased that this important step will be taken to help communities save and preserve the great British pub for many, many years to come.
Mrs Main
It is a delight to speak at this point in the debate, because I want to say to the Minister that the whole point of the other place is to make us think again, and he has thought again and he has listened. This is a wonderful solution that will protect areas such as mine.
I have the most beautiful constituency, and it is rumoured that I have the most pubs per square mile, although other areas dispute that. St Albans is an historical pilgrimage city and a coaching town, and we have pubs on just about every corner—if you can’t find a pub in St Albans, you’re not trying.
We have many historical pubs that have found it incredibly difficult to make their living in today’s hard times. I went to see the Chancellor about the effect of business rates on pubs. I am hugely glad that he listened, because many of the pubs in my constituency are incredibly small—almost the size of people’s front rooms—as they came along in a different era, and many are listed as well, which adds another dimension to the problem of making them viable. The owner of The Boot pub spent five years working with the planning system to try to get various alterations to his kitchen, because the pub’s listing made it very difficult for him to get that work done. I therefore welcome enormously anything that can make our pubs more viable and give them a sounder footing for the future.
The headquarters of CAMRA is in Hatfield road in St Albans, and it has been wonderful in this matter. I pay tribute to CAMRA and all those who have worked with it to ensure that the Minister listened to the thoughts expressed in the Lords and the representations of Members of Parliament, and came up with a solution that is pragmatic and elegant, as I think the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) described it. It now builds on the intentions expressed in the Lords, which is hugely important.
May I point out to any Members who have not visited my constituency that we are having a big tourism week from 31 March? One of my jobs that day will be to visit Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, an immensely historical pub. It is one of the pubs that claims to be the oldest pub, and they all contribute to the tourism offering. Not knowing that this elegant solution was going to come through today—which I am pleased to welcome and support—I wanted to make sure I went along and gave all my support to my pubs, which contribute enormously to our tourism offering. One of the pubs in St Albans, the White Hart immediately opposite the entrance to the cathedral, featured on “Most Haunted Live!”; another part of our tourism offering is that we have a very good ghost run, as St Albans is so historical.
I encourage people to go and visit their pubs. As the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) said, they are so much more than a place to buy a particular beer; they offer a huge historical pattern, and if they were removed it would in some regards be the death of my constituency. I can honestly say that people come to my constituency and say they cannot get over what a marvellous impression the pubs give, and I pay tribute to the many operating in St Albans to the highest possible standards.
I also want to make a few comments on what the Minister said about the permitted development rights on office space. I am concerned that we are losing so much office space. In an area such as mine, where the average house price is £550,000, there is nothing more lucrative than turning pubs—which we are now protecting—and offices into housing, and there was a rush to do so under the permitted development rights. I acknowledge that there were lots of areas of the country where offices were lying idle and it was difficult to convert them, but I do not have that problem in St Albans. We have lost 150,000 square feet of office space already, with another 50,000 or 60,000 square feet of office space in the offing to go, and businesses are telling me that they cannot find alternative premises. When businesses’ leases are running out, they find that they cannot have certainty about renewing them, and there is a worry that offices will disappear.
We in St Albans do have a lot of work being done online, and I also have a lot of small businesses, but AECOM in Victoria street has 70,000 square feet of office space with the lease coming up for renewal, and if such companies cannot secure an article 4 direction because they in any way become rationed, that will be a worry to me. I understand why the Minister says a local authority needs to show that it has its housing allocation sorted before it can put on an article 4 direction, but, sadly, we in St Albans, with a 1994 district plan, have the worst of all possible worlds: I do not have my housing allocation sorted and I have offices disappearing. When I addressed the chamber of commerce about two months ago, business after business told me that they would have to consider their future position in St Albans if this hollowing out and selling off of the family silver, as it were, continued.
I therefore make a plea to the Minister. In areas such as St Albans, the most lucrative thing anyone can ever do is close a business and make it into a house or a block of flats. I do not want to have a city that is devoid of the vibrancy of businesses or office space. I have made representations to the Minister about this before, and I thank him for listening about the pubs, and I thank the Chancellor for giving an additional £300 million to help support pubs, but I do not want my constituency to fall in the gap between the new thought processes under the article 4 direction and the permitted development rights removal on offices.
I welcome the new drift from the Government towards supporting pubs. Too often they have been seen as not important parts of our heritage, but they are vital to places such as St Albans. I am delighted that the Government have been listening all around—well done to the Minister for that.
Toby Perkins
Will the hon. Gentleman expand on his suggestion? Many of us share the concern, which I raised a moment ago, about a rush towards demolition. He proposes a moratorium, but is he proposing that the industry commits to such a thing or that the House passes something to bring it about?
Greg Mulholland
I am asking the Minister and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. The Secretary of State’s name is on the amendment, so I take this opportunity to thank him because he has clearly listened and accepted the proposal. As he knows, I also go to pubs in his constituency because I have family in Bromsgrove.
It is for the experts in the Department to consider the possibility of introducing a moratorium, because there is no possibility of it being done externally. This is not a matter simply for the industry. The Co-op is probably the worst pub killer of all the supermarket chains, others of which have been pretty bad. The supermarket chains are not part of the pub sector, and they see pubs as fodder for imposing their unwanted stores on communities. The supermarket chains will clearly not jump to do this, and nor will developers that are seeking to exploit high land values in London, St Albans and other parts of the country. From that point of view, it would be great if the Minister said that there should be a moratorium and, in the spirit of this change, called on people not to pursue such conversions now that they are deemed by Parliament to be wrong.
This is not the end of the matter. Ultimately, it has not been about securing great protection for pubs; that is one of the things that has been rather misunderstood and misrepresented, sometimes by both sides of the argument. It is simply about giving communities a say and about removing absurd permitted development rights that created a loophole that has been exploited by large pub-owning companies and large supermarkets for too long. There will still be predatory developers, and pub companies will still seek to undermine pubs to secure development or to go through the planning process for building a supermarket.
As I have said, the assets of community value scheme remains important, but it is now time to consider strengthening it. Giving communities a genuine right to buy, as communities in Scotland have, is long overdue and would represent genuine localism. I have had a conversation with the Minister, and it is now time to consider a separate category in the planning and tax system for community pubs, which are the ones that we really care about. They are the ones that have the community value, which many Members have mentioned, in a way that other licensed drinking establishments do not.
CAMRA has so far said that it does not want to engage in this, but it is now time to crack the nut of defining a genuine community pub that does the things we have talked about and that has value to the community. The British Pub Confederation and Protect Pubs certainly wish to do so. If we do that, in addition to creating the extra layer of genuine planning protection for those pubs, and only those pubs, against predatory development, and only when the pubs are viable, we can crack the nut of having a different system of taxation, and we will never again see the disastrous headlines for the Treasury such as of one pub in York facing a 600% increase in its rateable value. I was in that very small pub, the wonderful Slip Inn, a couple of weeks ago during the Liberal Democrat conference. As I did at the meeting with the hon. Member for Bristol North West, I offer to work with the Minister to find a way of doing that, which could offer the security we need for our hugely important, viable community pubs.
This wonderful news is the start of a conversation, and I thank the Minister and all those involved. This is a hugely significant day in pub campaigning. As this is English Tourism Week, I know that every Member here today, and many more who are not, will want to raise a glass to this win for pubs and to the Minister for listening to all the campaigners who have helped to make it happen. They will want to toast this victory and the importance of the great English and great British pub.
Gavin Barwell
This has been a very positive and productive debate. Let me respond briefly to a few of the points that have been mentioned. I must pay tribute to the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) for the role that he plays in leading the pubs all-party group and for the lobbying that he has done on this issue. In referring to his numerous visits to pubs, he said that behind every door is a different surprise. That rather put me in mind of inspecting my children’s bedrooms after they have been told to clear them up.
The hon. Gentleman rightly paid tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), for the work that he has done on pubs. In particular, he expressed concern about the time between this announcement and the regulations being put in place. I will just reiterate what I said, which is that we intend to get them in place before July. We will do it as soon as possible. Clearly, it depends on when this Bill gets Royal Assent and when the regulations are drafted. We recognise the importance of moving quickly here. In the interim, there is the option of using assets of community value as a means of protection, and I will certainly look at whether we can make any other transitional arrangements. Clearly, those arrangements may have the same problem in terms of the time involved in drafting secondary legislation.
Toby Perkins
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is right that there are existing protections available. The hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) suggested some kind of moratorium. I am not clear how, legislatively, that might be performed. May I invite the Minister to join me in calling on all the organisations that might be tempted to show the worst of values and rush things through in advance of legislation instead to show the best of values and treat this as legislation that already exists, and to go through the proper planning processes for any decisions that they make between now and July?